I Wait Now for Only the Wind
by Schildkroete
Summary: AU to 5.04: Sam never said Yes to Lucifer. Adam, however, did. And Sam's humnity is lost anyway, as is everyone else's.


Adam is barely human these days.

But of course that isn't true. Adam isn't human at all and he's not Adam. He's an angel, the Devil, Lucifer in a suit that doesn't fit. His skin is flaking off, his eyes are bloodshot and red and when he smiles the gabs between his eyes become visible. He looks like a zombie, Dean thinks every time he sees him, but that isn't true either because he knows what zombies look like. Zombies look better, hardly dead at all. These days, zombies are old-fashioned and redundant because the Croatoan virus has created too many monsters too much like them: mindless and violent, but not dead at all, though they should be.

Lucifer looks like what Adam, in his ignorance, might have believed a zombie to look like; like a walking corpse. Perhaps not walking too much longer, Dean thinks every time, every time, but another time comes and he's still standing; falling apart and so much more powerful than any being has a right to be.

It's this power that's tearing the body apart. Dean known how Lucifer tries to keep his form together, the second best there is, knows how many demons, loyal to their master, get sacrificed, their host bodies bled dry with them inside, so Adam's body may make it through another day. It's grotesque, and disgusting, and they should be dead, both of them, all of them. Adam is Dean's brother, but he's dead anyway, would be, and it doesn't matter in the end – what is able, through whatever means, to contain a being as powerful and terrible as the Devil is nothing less than monstrous. Should not exist. Has to die, even if it's too late to save the world. Dean can still protect those who are human (like him) from those who are not.

His face is grim as he sets down the photos, and Erics face is pale. He has just seen the Devil and returned to tell of it, and Dean is almost certain that Lucifer has known he was there, has allowed him to take the pictures and get away. A message to Dean, he thinks: Hello. I'm still here.

As if Dean could ever forget it, when he has a constant reminder living right next door.

He needs to figure out what to do now. They know where Lucifer is, but can they do anything to harm him? Is it a trap? Dean is sure it is, but he doesn't want to do nothing. The cold air hits his face when he steps outside and offers no solution. He keeps walking and thinking, thinking of demons and blood and fresh corpses. It has been weeks since the last attack, the last battle, and now Lucifer is waiting for them, handing out an invitation Dean can't accept and can't decline. Can't do what the Devil wants him to do. (He can't do what everyone else wants him to do, or himself.)

A muffled sound makes him stop, turn, watch. He wouldn't recognize the man kneeling in front of the small hut had he not witnessed him turning into what he is. His skin is pale and almost transparent in the weak, gray light of the near-dead day, like a ghost or a shadow. Only his hair is dark, too long, and his eyes: sunken in, black. Staring at him without seeing anything that's really there. Thin arms flail through the air, hit at nothing, until they are caught by the man who used to be an angel and is still so much stronger than a human, holding the taller man down without effort. Keeping him from getting up and falling, or getting anywhere near Dean as he starts screaming, dull and pain-filled and without words.

Adam is barely human these days, and neither is Sam.

The screams tear at Dean though he is sure none of the rough, breathless noises is supposed to be his name. They grate on his nerves and so does the way Cas is looking at him, like he expected Dean to _do something_ about this.

Like there was anything he could do.

Twenty meters from him Sam doubles over and Cas catches him, holds him through his cramps. Perhaps the words would make sense if Dean had the time to listen. He's pretty certain Sam is begging, but there's nothing he could give. The withdrawal is ugly, but it'll happen sooner or later anyway, and better it happens now and they have some reserves left when they need them than have their number one demon killer run out of fuel just before the next attack and be a useless wreck like this when it matters just because Dean gave him the last blood they have stored to spare him a little pain.

They have to stock up soon, in any case. Sam doesn't take any other food anymore – it's like his body forgot what to do with it, or perhaps he just can't be bothered with nourishment that doesn't come with a kick. He's become thin and without constant input he's weak and sick and meaningless. With even a little demon blood to power him up he's powerful, all they need to fight their battles, and nothing Dean wants to be associated with.

The demons fear him, though, and that's all they can ask for. Dean wonders if they have been so quiet lately because they want to postpone the next attack until Sam has starved to death.

The blood of Croatoan victims doesn't work. It is a pity because it is so much easier to come by.

Darkness falls quickly over the camp, but Dean hears the noise of vomiting, and he can make out the outline of Cas pulling the outline of Sam away from the soiled spot until he comes to rest on the cold dirt. Hears the voices of others, talking behind corners and closed doors, hushed, not wanting their words to be heard. Hears his own heart beat.

He hears the word Sam speaks, clearly now; one word over and over, and Dean doesn't know what he's saying No to but he knows it's not the word they would hear if Lucifer came walking into their little village and offered Sam the blood he craved in exchange for his (soul) body.

Lucifer doesn't come. Naturally – things have never been this easy, and their protections are sound. This all doesn't matter and isn't new, and Dean is not closer to deciding what to do than he was before.

Sam arches his back and screams his agony into the night.

"Will you shut him up, damn it?" Dean busts out, growls, glares at Cas who seems to think he's Sam's personal babysitter yet is pretty damn shitty at his job. "Gag him if you have to. Everyone's nervous enough without him disturbing their sleep." Without being reminded of (pain) what they have in their midst.

Cas looks at him from where he's kneeling, his eyes somehow visible even with the dark and the distance. He says, "He has a name and you know it well."

"Just shut him up before I do it," Dean snaps, his fists clenching along with his heart. He turns and walks away and the screams follow him all the way to his hut and do not stop.

* * *

An old man is sitting by a hole in the round, tearing out the root of a tree, or maybe someone's insides. Sam doesn't know him and it irritates him, confuses him. Distracts him from the pain and the cramps, but in a way that makes his head swim, makes him nauseous because he thinks there must be a meaning there and he doesn't find it. Like it's important. So much is important these days and he feels he misses all the points.

"It's just a hallucination," Lucifer says gently. "It has no meaning."

_You're a hallucination too,_ Sam wants to say. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. It doesn't matter because it isn't true anyway. Lucifer doesn't even bother to correct him as he sits down on the cold, damp earth beside him and gently puts a flayed hand to Sam's forehead. No Enochian sigils and no protective magic can keep him away because Sam's mind always lets him in.

Beside him, Castiel shifts and Sam wonders if he can sense Lucifer's presence and if it matters.

His bones ace. Before the hut, the old man sits beside his hole and pulls and pulls and pulls.

Lucifer is wearing Adam's form today as it really looks these days. His skin is broken, one eye milky white, the other gleaming feverishly, like an infected wound or the reflection of hellfire. He's loosing his hair, too, but under his decaying skin Adam's body is stronger than it has even been when it was Adam wearing it. It's the demon blood he drinks in abundance bulking him up, Sam knows; like steroids. The same happened to him before the effect was reversed and the blood started to burn away all his strength.

Perhaps this will happen to Adam's body too: burned out by the power in the blood and the Devil. Perhaps he'll fall apart until he's nothing more than an animated skeleton covered in flayed skin and some remnants of flesh while Lucifer keeps him going and going and going. Sam wonders if his brother's soul has been burned away yet or if he is aware somehow of what is happening to him, witness of his own decay. Guilt washes over him at the thought because this should be his fate and Adam is only cursed with it, is only suffering because of him, like so many.

If Sam accepted that fate in Adam's stead, the world would be ashes.

"Not ashes," Lucifer says. "The world would be better. Everything would be better. And you will never burn." His hand runs through Sam's damp bangs, comes to rest on his hot forehead like a parent's hand on the forehead of a sick child. "You'd never suffer, like now."

They have been here before. Sam is tired of saying the same words over and over so he doesn't. But Lucifer's touch feels good, is gentleness in a world that has forgotten what the word means, and he thinks he might lean into it even though he doesn't want to.

Perhaps Castiel is telling him not to listen. Or he has long since left. Sam doesn't know, knows only the feeling of the stone poking his left shoulder blade because he's lying on it and the pounding in his head. The feel of his eyes liquefying and running out of their sockets (though that is probably not true).

He can still see and all he sees is Lucifer (and the old man by the hole, pulling, pulling, pulling) and all he can hear is _Yes, yes, yes. Give up._

"No," he whispers.

"This world as it is isn't worth all this pain." Lucifer's skin is no longer flayed and burning; perhaps it's not Adam's skin anymore but Dean's. Or Castiel's and Lucifer isn't here at all and all the words are made up by Sam's mind, Castiel's whispers twisted into something he doesn't want to hear.

"Because you know it's true. You owe them nothing. What have they ever done for you? Even you brother keeps you out here like a dog that can't be trusted around the children. You save his pathetic species, every day, every minute, and instead of the care you should be getting they let you lie in the cold dirt. Tell me, is that the behaviour of people who deserve to be saved."

"Not all like this." Taking is hard. Sam wants to say _Dean isn't like this,_ but he can't get out the words.

"But what else would you expect from them?" Lucifer continues as if Sam hadn't spoken at all. "They can't see beyond the limits of their own humanity, but those they see very well. They know you're not one of them and never have been, so you mean nothing to them. To him."

Sam wants to protest, but Lucifer is faster and already knows what to say. Doesn't have to search for words. Isn't tired of making excuses for someone who doesn't want to be excused, over and over.

"Oh, family is everything to Dean. _You_ used to be everything to Dean. But he long since realised that you're not really his family, and I think it's time for you to accept it as well."

Dean's faced is blurred by the tears in Sam's eyes that are caused by pain (because it hurts), but Dean's voice keeps penetrating the rushing sound of blood in Sam's ears and the touch of his calloused hands is gentle, so gentle, reminding Sam that this is the Devil and he is cruel.

"Let it go, Sam," the Devil says, begs, like it is Sam's wellbeing he is worried about. "Don't cling to a life that was never yours to begin with. We needed human parents to get you into this world, but you were never meant to belong with that family, and you know it. Felt it all your life, didn't you? And so did they. Just think about how easily they always let you go."

Agony travels through Sam's body in the waves of a cramp and he gasps and curls on his side, away from the voice and the face, into another pair of hands whose touch has never lost its impersonality, like Sam's too far away to hurt them.

"Castiel," he whispers when he can breathe. "Please. Please."

"Your own mother gave you to us before you were even born," Lucifer goes on, his soft voice drowning out everything Castiel might say. "Oh, yes, I know – she didn't know what price she promised Azazel for your father's life, but trust me: she wasn't stupid. Do you really believe she didn't know what the demon would come for when you where born ten years after she made the deal, to the day? She's been a hunter; she knew about demons and how to keep them away. She could have wrapped you in protective sigils, covered your nursery in salt and iron, never let you out of her sight. But she didn't, because even if she might not have been aware of it herself, deep inside she'd given up on you the moment you were born. Somewhere, in an unacknowledged, ugly corner of her heart she had decided that her second son was an acceptable price to pay for John's life."

_She tried to save me__._ Sam doesn't know if he gets the words out. It doesn't really matter because Lucifer is so close to him now that he always knows what Sam means to say, or doesn't. _That day. She tried to stop him._

"Instinct." Lucifer waves the argument away. "She couldn't help it, that moment she wasn't thinking. But doing nothing all those months before – that was a conscious decision. And your father," he moves on before Sam can utter some protest that would be useless anyway because Lucifer never lies, not to him. "Your dear daddy. So many sweet memories of him, don't you have? Did it ever occur to you that perhaps he constantly pushed you away because he _wanted_ you to be gone? He did tell your brother to kill you, after all. You think he'd have done that if it was Dean?" Lucifer tilted his head and Sam thought he didn't look like Dean anymore because that sad expression didn't fit on his brother's face. "Ah, Dean."

"Don't."

"He gave up on saving you so easily when you no longer fit into his picture of what the world had to be. Didn't even bother to preserve your humanity once he realised it wasn't the only thing inside you. Would a real brother really care about what you are? You're still the same person he watched over when you were kids, but he can't see beyond the demon blood in your veins."

"That's not it." Sam can barely breathe through the pain. "What I did –"

"Oh, come on! What you did was really a group effort. You know I'll be eternally grateful for you letting me out of my cage and all that, but in the end you only turned the key. It wouldn't have been possible without Dean breaking the first seal, or without all the angels who worked so hard to get you where you needed to be. Zachariah, Uriel, nice little Castiel too. Aren't you tired of always taking the blame to absolve everyone else? It's not like anyone ever bothered to make excuses for _you_."

"Cas," Sam gasps. There's nothing. Perhaps Castiel is gone, or perhaps he's over by the trees, pulling someone's insides out of a hole in the ground. (Perhaps Sam's.)

"Your beloved brother would kill you now. I think he thinks he's finally ready." Lucifer just doesn't stop talking. Sam wants to punch him, but he also craves the hand softly stroking his hair more than he thought he could; he doesn't want to move and have it disappear. "He's given up on you. That's why he uses you like this – it might take away what's left of the human in you, but that was never much worth to begin with, so what does it matter? He's all too willing to destroy you as it makes killing demons so much easier. Fighting fire with fire. I wonder if he appreciates the irony."

"Don't you know?" Sam manages. "You seem to know everything else about him pretty well."

Lucifer only smiles. "I know there's no way back for you now, and so does he. And yet he used you like this from the beginning, never minding the consequences. You're only a weapon to him, Sam."

"It was my idea." And Sam is doing it again. Defending Dean, always defending Dean. "I told him to. I made him."

He remembers the rain best. The long days in which it was only raining, only raining, and it was cold and he couldn't bother to move, or eat, or sleep, because Adam was gone, was where Sam was supposed to be and it had all been in vain. There was nothing he could do now. He'd started this and he'd hoped, believed he could make up for it by not letting it come to an end. Hold on and find a way to fix this because the Devil needed _him_ and he would never give in, no, never. And then Adam was gone and the end was coming anyway, just slower. He had to do something then, anything, anything to help – if not the world than anyone, since this was all his fault and him putting a gun in his mouth wouldn't have helped any of his victims, not really, even if they thought it would.

So when Dean came and stared at him with a gun in his had and rain dripping down his face he'd said Please, and Let me. I can fight them. I can help these people, some of them. It's something I can do and no one else, so let me. For them. You swore to protect them and I can.

He wasn't bargaining for his life, just for time. He never asked for forgiveness. Eventually Dean said Fine. Fine, and looked away.

No one trusts him. It doesn't matter. He does what he can for them and never tries to get too close. The constant guilt helps him deal with the withdrawal; knowing he deserves this makes it easier to say No, cling to the word even when it gets so bad he forgets, for a while, why he has to.

The times in between are so much worse. When he is full of blood and power and the craving is satisfied for a moment. He hates it because it feels so good and he is always afraid one day he won't be able to give it up. He hates the rush of power when he holds a demon's essence, (it's _life_) in his hands and vaporizes it because a part of him craves this feeling as much as his body craves the blood and he thinks that maybe in those moments he doesn't think of the person he is saving but only about the power, the control, the little voice that is perhaps Lucifer but probably not that whispers, _This is what you're meant for. This is you._

"It's what you are. It's not what you want to be, but one day that's not going to be enough." Lucifer's voice is even softer now, female and no longer sad. "Dean knows that, or thinks he does. He could help you fight me, of course. Be a little kinder every now and then. Hold your hand when the pain gets too bad. Tell you you're not alone. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Just one moment of having your brother back. Now, if only he'd care." A sigh, sad again, for him, and a hand on his face wiping the tears away. "I know you don't want to hear it, but I think deep down inside Dean wants you to break. To give in. He's as tired of the struggle of you are. Once you've given in he can take action and everything will be easier."

Dean can't take on the Devil, not when he's in Sam; not even now. And Dean knows it. Castiel knows it. Bobby knew it, too. (Maybe that's why he hasn't fought as hard as he should have.) Perhaps no one else does but they do. Lucifer's words make no sense. Until he continues, long blonde hair brushing over Sam's skin as Jessica leans over him. "And when it happens," she whispers, "he's not going to kill you after all." She kisses his forehead, then his eyelids, while he loses himself in the touch and the memory. "Don't tell Dean – it's a secret. Now sleep." Her voice is so soft and he misses her so much. So much he can't breathe. "It's okay," she tells him. "I'm here now."

He sleeps and dreams of the hole in the ground and the pulling that doesn't stop, of his mother and his father and of Dean's neck breaking under the soles of his feet.

* * *

It's dark now, and even after years Castiel cannot get used to the very mortal inability to see at night. There are shadows around them; into one of them Dean disappeared an hour ago, or two, or maybe just minutes. Castiel's sense of time is gone, too – subjective now, things dragging on because he doesn't like them. Doesn't like Sam on the ground before him, pale in the grey shimmer of night and the only thing he can see clearly. Whimpering and mumbling after his screams have died down, and sometimes muttering "No," and "Please, Cas, please, please" and neither of them knows what he is asking for. (The both know.)

He can't see anymore like he used to, but he still has some senses that humans have not, cannot understand. Not an angel anymore, not entirely mortal he can sense the presence that is all angel and more. There is no location to it – Lucifer is here and he is not. Castiel cannot see him, cannot hear him, but he knows he's here and he's speaking, whispering in Sam's ear, bound to him and inside him in a way even Castiel cannot comprehend. "Don't listen to him," he says, but it's him Sam does not listen to. Him he does not hear. He who does not matter. Castiel moves to brush damp hair out of the human's face and in return Sam whispers his brother's name.

It is cold outside. Sam's breath (but not Castiel's) is forming white clouds in the air that dissipate within seconds. Sam should be inside where it is warmer. (He has a hut all for himself, a luxury granted him not out of respect.) But the fever will come anyway and the earth is easier to clean of vomit. Most of all, Sam does not take well to being inside when the withdrawal starts and he feels he has to escape the confinement of even his own skin. (Once he tried to claw it open, first with his nails and then with a knife and would not calm down even after they had tied him down and gagged him so that he could not bite off his tongue.)

So Castiel lets him stay outside as long as he can. Listens to the words everyone else, all of the people behind too-thin doors and not entirely closed windows, believes to be Sam talking to himself, and tries to deduct what Lucifer is saying, what he whispers in Sam's ear and mind and heart. Secrets, perhaps. But not lies. Because he is the Devil and nothing is crueller than the truth.

Sam cries. Castiel cannot help him. Eventually Sam falls asleep (passes out, after an hour of shivering on the cold ground and throwing up twice more) and Castiel takes him inside for what is to come. Even now his strength far surpasses a human's and Sam is so thin now, barely alive. Castiel carries him with ease. This, at least, he can do.

* * *

Lina's daughter died of blood poisoning earlier this fall. She said she buried her at night, in the woods, in an unmarked place known only to her. Castiel knows it's not true, that she keeps the small body hidden in an old box under this hut, near the place where she is sleeping. It's cold already, so it doesn't matter much, and perhaps the others, even her roommates, do not notice.

Castiel doesn't judge her when they lie entangled in her bed and find not oblivion but something like comfort. He knows something himself about the inability to let go.

This day he does not linger though she wants him to. He leaves her and the dead child for the chill air outside, for screams and the smell of vomit. The smell is undetectable from this distance, even for him, but he can hear the screams and see them in the faces of people he passes.

It is not necessary for him to be with Sam. There is nothing he can do that would benefit the human, yet he feels pulled back to his side whenever he stays away for too long. He has long since given up trying to figure out why that is, and why the sentiment seems to exist only in him and not in any of the others. They have always, since the first time, dealt with Sam's withdrawal by locking him away and trying not to listen. For some reason hard to analyse, Castiel finds this wrong.

The smell of vomit greets him as soon as he opens the door. There are other smells too, but the sharp stink of a stomach that had nothing to bring up but acid dominates everything.

Suffocating on his own vomit while he is tied to the bed would be a relief for Sam. It will not happen.

The restraints on the bed are made of iron, marked with Enochian sigils meant to suppress Sam's powers when they run wild along with his mind. They are effective, but not as much as they need to be, not lately, when Sam's powers grow stronger and stronger the more he gives up on his humanity, lets go of it like an old memento he no longer has a reason for keeping. The room gets damaged sometimes, what little it contains cluttered around and sometimes broken. Castiel is the only one who enters here (ever) when Sam is not well. He cannot be harmed. He has no fear.

Castiel is the only one who enters, so he is surprised to see Dean in the room, beside the bed, his hands on his brother's shoulders as Sam screams despite the gag forced between his teeth. The screams aren't loud – Sam has been in here for two days, he is weak, hoarse – but somehow they penetrate everything, and it seems like the rest of the world has fallen silent, the entire camp and the forest around them pausing in anything that might cause noise to let him be heard.

Dean never took well to seeing his brother in pain, even after, so Castiel cannot blame him for turning away whenever Sam's suffering goes beyond what he can bear. Except he does. Now he looks at his friend in exactly the place he should be and doesn't know what to think.

"What are you doing here?" The words are spoken in his voice, so they must have left his mouth, yet Castiel had no intention of speaking them. This is Dean's brother, suffering. Dean has a reason to be here, and a right. The question should not be necessary. It should not carry surprise, nor accusation. "Dean," Castiel says. He steps closer, hurries his movement when he gets a better look, stops when Dean looks up, as if he had not until now noticed Castiel's presence.

His face is hard and empty but there's distress in his eyes, an expression of something that might drive a human to do anything. Castiel wonders if he is drunk.

"I passed and there was nothing," Dean says. "No sound. I thought it was over. I thought perhaps…" He stops there and his eyes are not on Castiel, not really. "I wanted to check. He started to scream when I opened the door. Won't stop."

Sam is still screaming. The gag in his mouth serves to keep him from biting his tongue rather than to retrain his voice, and perhaps to keep him from forming words that make sense.

Sam's eyes are closed, but he is awake (in a sense); Castiel feels uncontrolled power like gushes of wind against his soul. The door slams shut and Dean jumps.

"Why are you here, Cas?" he asks. "Why are you always here?"

Castiel thinks about what to say this time, instead of simply speaking. He finds himself unable to take his eyes off Dean's hands, on Sam's shoulders. "Someone should be," he says in the end. Sam stops screaming, finally, but starts whimpering instead. Tears running from his closed eyes disappear in his hair and the window rattles. There is little in the way of personal belongings in this room. "He suffers for us and should not have to do it alone."

"Then you're an idiot. You're not helping him. No one can. He's going through this alone, if you're here or not, so there's no point in anyone being with him."

"I do not agree with your view on this," says Castiel, not moving. Dean's hands are on Sam's shoulders, his thumbs very close to Sam's throat.

Dean does not reply. His eyes are fixed on his brother again, and his hands are shaking ever so slightly. Castiel watches them closely. It's cold inside the room, as if the window was already broken.

Then Sam's back arches and he lets out a long, hollow scream that tells not of physical pain. A second later he screams again, and then he starts forming words, understandable despite the gag in his mouth. "No, no," he yells, and "_Dean!_"

Dean grits his teeth, bars them. "Sam," he hisses. "Shut up. Just shut up." But Sam calls for him again, or perhaps he just yells his name. Perhaps Dean is right and he cannot help him. Only the blood of a demon would help now, take the pain away and perhaps the madness, but they don't have much left. They need to safe it for a time when they need Sam strong and whole to fight for them. Castiel understands that. Dean explained it to him.

There are books on the shelf. Not many – what they rescued from Robert Singer's library is kept in Dean's place, in a safe distance from his brother's unpredictable powers that show no consideration for the value of information when they run wild. The books inside this room are Sam's person possessions, read a dozen times at least. Two novels, one classic, one modern. A bible taken from a cheap motel, the pages already stained and torn when he acquired it. A little black ring book that Castiel knows to be Sam's journal. (He once failed to resist temptation and looked inside. It is empty.)

One of the books suddenly gets thrown at a wall, another at Castiel. He sees it out of the corner of his eye and ducks out of reflex. The book hits Dean in the shoulder with more force than a thrown book usually contains. Not one second later Dean is hurled backwards and hits the shelf, which collapses, causing the remaining books to tumble down on him along with an empty plastic cup.

Castiel feels the power wash around him, tear at his hair and his clothes but he remains standing. Slumped on the floor, Dean is silent. He doesn't curse, as Castiel might have expected him to. He just watches as the fallen angel takes his place beside Sam and takes hold of his shoulders.

Sam seizes under his hands. Dean pulls his arms over his head to protect it from things that might be thrown around. The window shatters.

But it only lasts for a minute. When it is over, Sam falls silent and all the chaos settles. For a moment, Castiel hears nothing.

Then Dean climbs to his feet, his face pale and hard and empty. He doesn't usually come here, doesn't see this, only knows it to happen. Even standing, his posture is still slumped, like he is hurt.

Sam's wrists, as Castiel inspects them, show damage where the shackles touch them. He is so far removed from human by now that the sigils burn him. "Guess we need something stronger than that," Dean says from where he is standing on the other side of the room. "Because I don't know if you noticed, but that magic isn't really doing it anymore."

There is something under Castiel's foot. Looking down, he sees that he is half-standing on the book that has hit Dean. It is the bible.

"Are you hurt?" he asks. Dean has hit the shelf hard. It is broken and there is no point in fixing it before the demon blood is out of Sam's system as much as it can be. Sam will insist on doing it himself.

Dean doesn't answer. He is holding one of the books that fell on him in his hands, doesn't seem to know what to do with it. Castiel recognizes it as the empty journal. He wonders, not for the first time, why Sam keeps it; what he will write in it, and when. He walks over to take the small book from Dean's fingers and place it on the desk.

Dean doesn't say anything; he keeps saying nothing as Castiel helps him out of the hut and back to his own, leaning heavily on the fallen angel and limping but not making a sound. Castiel makes him sit down on the bed and wishes he was Dean again.

As if he heard that thought, Dean confesses a secret of his own. "I wish," he says, sharp voice betraying his pain and yet oddly dull, "I wish he would just die, sometimes. Every time."

"You do not mean that," says Castiel as he kneels to inspect the damage to Dean's knee.

"No. No, of course not." Dean looks at the wall. "We need him."

It doesn't actually matter, Castiel thinks later, after Dean has fallen asleep reeking of alcohol and he is outside again, shivering in the cold air and plagued by a feeling he identifies as hunger. It doesn't matter what Dean thinks, what he might, or should do, because they have long since passed the point where there was sense in trying, and no one noticed, not even Castiel, certainly not Dean. (Though sometimes Castiel thinks that isn't true, that Dean knew and accepted and did nothing.) Dean has gone down far and quickly since the cage was opened, just like Castiel has fallen from grace and shattered on the Earth. There is no longer any point in trying to safe Sam from the fall because Sam is already falling, all the way down. Only he will not shatter upon impact, because Lucifer is waiting at the bottom to catch him, and his arms and words and whispers will be nothing but kind.

* * *

Dean's wish gets fulfilled a month later. The camp is attacked and Sam is given the blood he needs to protect them, and for a brief moment, for a few days after one day spend crushing the bones of Croatoan victims and tearing the lone demon out of the body of a little girl, he becomes Sam again. Withdrawn, quiet, almost shy, but coherent and sharp-witted as ever. They talk, Castiel and Sam. At one point Sam almost laughs.

Eventually the withdrawal starts again because they got not a single new drop of demon blood and used what little they had left. This time Sam starts screaming and doesn't stop. Not even when his voice dies, barely for breath. He doesn't sleep, or he sleeps but does not rest, constantly forming words no one wants to hear. It goes on for days. Then it is over.

The withdrawal seems over, yet it isn't. Sam seems better, but he isn't. His powers should have faded but they haven't.

Castiel misses the signs as he frees him from the shackles and tends to the burns on his wrists and ankles. Sam stares ahead, distracted, distressed, seems to be somewhere else, and Castiel misses it because after a week of hallucinations and the Devil in his dreams, Sam cannot be expected to be fine. So Castiel leaves and so does Sam, wanders around, mumbles and whispers, his head too full of thoughts not his own. Too many secrets not his own. It makes everyone nervous, the way he looks at them, the way he knows too much. Sometimes he screams their secrets in their faces, at other times he just screams, never really fighting them when they try to shut him up.

Around Castiel, Sam is only quiet. Him he does not even look at, so Castiel hears only the whispers of the others. He worries, but not enough. It goes on merely for two days before Castiel hears Sam yell in the distance, agitated and mad, yet by the time he's exited Risa's bed and slipped into his clothes he doesn't hear anything. It's been going on for two days, before Castiel is walking through the camp and no one speaks a word, no one will look at him and the air is heavy with shock and guilt and relief.

When Castiel gets to the place everyone is not looking at, Dean is already there; yet he cannot have been for long, for people are only now staring to leave. Almost everyone aims to be somewhere else, somewhere that is not close to their leader. Only the one with the knife stays, and two others who maybe helped, maybe were just there. They look defiant and scared as they find themselves alone with Dean and Castiel, and Sam who is lying on his back, his fingers slightly curled, his eyes half open. It is Castiel who closes them. Kneeling beside his friend on the half-frozen earth, he notices how calm Sam's face looks, and how young.

When he look up, Dean still stands where he stood before, staring at the man with the knife as if he didn't know what to do with him. What to think. Maybe he isn't thinking at all.

Maybe he still isn't thinking when he finally looks down at his brother, but his face is pale and his hands shake and he looks more alive than he has in two years.

Castiel's hand does not shake as he puts it flat on Sam's chest, feels his rips through too-thin fabric and skin, feels, deep below, the first beginning flicker of life.

"Lucifer will not let him go," he says.

Dean closes his eyes.

- End -

September 17, 2010


End file.
